He’s Created a Monster: Alan Ball Talks ‘True Blood’

As anticipation grows for the June 26 season premiere of “True Blood” on HBO, an article in this weekend’s Arts & Leisure section looks at Anna Paquin, her trajectory on the show and what Season 4 holds in store for Sookie Stackhouse. Of course, Ms. Paquin would have no lines to speak, and never know when to bare her neck or shed her clothes if not for Alan Ball, the “True Blood” creator and producer, who adapted the series from Charlaine Harris‘s best-selling “Southern Vampire Mysteries” novels.

Mr. Ball, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “American Beauty” and Emmy-winning creator of “Six Feet Under,” spoke recently from his West Hollywood office about “True Blood.” In these excerpts from that conversation, he discusses the creation and history of the show, what the new season holds in store and why he recently filmed a portion of a coming “True Blood” episode in 3-D.

Q.

How closely do you follow Charlaine Harris’s novels in planning the seasons of “True Blood,” and are you already thinking about Season 5?

A.

When I first brought this material to HBO’s attention, there were four books in the series. Now there are 11. So I knew that there was a longevity and it had a big, crazy, Dickensian sprawling feel to it. I’m pretty much a live-in-the-moment guy, so I will start thinking about Season 5 when that happens.

We’ve started to lay pipe for that in very buried ways. Television viewing has become for me a completely different experience, because I don’t watch shows on a weekly basis. I wait until the DVD or I TiVo everything and wait until the end of a season and watch it all over a weekend. For me that’s a really satisfying experience, like reading a book. And some of my favorite shows I watch again, so there’s a certain enjoyment in knowing what’s happening and you’re like, Ohhhh. It makes me think about in Season 1 of “Six Feet Under,” when Nate was complaining about having headaches, and of course now you know that’s a symptom of the thing that’s eventually going to kill him.

Q.

And that was completely by design, right?

A.

Sometimes things are planted and sometimes things sort of happen. In the first season of “True Blood,” there’s a moment where Arlene is thinking, God, I can’t believe my period is late again. When it came time for her to be pregnant, it just worked perfectly. Almost as if it were planned.

Q.

As the show has grown into a cultural phenomenon, does it affect how you plan and write for it? Do you feel like you have to respond to the wishes of the fan base?

A.

I find that whenever I start to think about how I believe people are going to respond, then I get in trouble. Because then it’s no longer writing, it’s marketing. You start thinking about your audience, or your consumers, what are their needs and how do you meet them, and you’re no longer just telling a story. For me, I was reading Charlaine’s books and yeah, it was about a vampire, and then there were werewolves and all of this other stuff. That’s part of what I love about this. The fact that’s it’s this big onion and you just keep peeling back the layers, so I just tried to take that into the show as much as I could.

Q.

How did Anna Paquin first become involved with the series?

A.

My casting director got a call from Anna Paquin’s people. And I said, “Really? That doesn’t – huh. She wants to do this?” Because at the time Anna was dark-haired, and certainly her body of work didn’t lead me anywhere near Sookie Stackhouse. But she aggressively pursued it. She came in and read. A lot of actresses of much lesser accomplishments were like, no, it has to be an offer. Or their agents said that, probably without ever even telling them they were putting them up for this role, because that’s what agents do. I think what’s been fun for her is that she a legitimate reason for doing something that she would never have done on her own, which is go blond and spray-tanned.

Q.

What made you think that she might not be interested in the part?

A.

In all of her adult work, she tended to not feel like a small-town girl. And I’m from the South. I know those girls. I went to school with them. They’re my cousins. And I just felt like she’s so distinct. You think of Anna Paquin, you think of “The Piano.” New Zealand. Because really, deep down at the core, this show is a big Victorian romance novel. The actors just have to embrace it, they can’t comment on it. You have to play it straight and you have to play it real. It was clear from all the auditions that she got that.

Q.

A big part of Sookie’s character when we meet her is her naivete. Is that something Anna was able to bring to the role?

A.

Absolutely, because Sookie is, at the beginning of the story, very sheltered. As one would be, who lost their parents at such an early age. And having the ability to hear people’s thoughts. When she meets somebody who she can’t hear their thoughts, it’s so liberating. The other thing that she brings to it is a total fearlessness. I know there are a lot of actresses who would be uncomfortable with the way we depict sexuality on the show, because they just don’t want to be seen naked. That was never an issue. I think it certainly helped that she and Stephen were falling in love in real life over the course of the first season, in helping sell that romance because it was so genuine.

Q.

It seems like Sookie went through a transformation from Seasons 1 and 2 to Season 3, where once she was a perpetual damsel in distress and now she’s going undercover in werewolf bars and battling with Russell Edgington.

A.

She’s fighting, yeah. And now it’s just clear in the writers’ room that Sookie is a force to be reckoned with. She has come into her own. She has her own powers, which she’s gradually becoming more and more accustomed to. She still can’t totally control them. But, yeah, she still looks like that sweet girl next door but if you try to kill her, she’ll kill you first. Which is kind of fun, to have a character like that.

Q.

Did it feel to you like maybe Season 3 got a little baroque with all the intricacies of the vampires’ kingdoms, and Russell running around while carrying his dead companion’s remains in a jar?

A.

Well, you have a character who’s been around for 3,000 years and he’s a king, and we got to write in fancy king-language. So, yeah, it did get baroque and to me that’s part of the fun of it. Because of the supernatural nature of the story, you can just keep opening doors, in terms of telling stories. By Season 4 of “Six Feet Under” in the writers’ room, somebody would pitch something and we’d be like, “Oh, we’ve already done that. Oh, somebody’s already been unfaithful. Somebody’s had this sexual addiction problem.” Whereas on “True Blood,” when you have characters who are thousands of years old and you can do a flashback, it’s not to 1980 – although we do have a 1980s flashback this season – but it can be to the 9th century. We go to the Spanish Inquisition a lot this year. That’s really, really fun.

Q.

The show sometimes gets a bad rap for its explicit sex scenes. Are those moments only about prurient interests, or are they also saying something about the characters in them?

A.

I think all writers are armchair psychologists to some degree or another, and I think a character’s sexuality is fascinating. It’s a great way to really get at the root of their identity, because it’s such a personal thing. Certainly if you read Charlaine’s books, that’s a big part of it, and they are in one sense romance novels. Or as some people refer to romance novels, lady-porn. [laughs] I don’t think anything about our show is pornographic. I think porn is about body parts and art is about souls. Hopefully, it’s just a way of telling the story and the story is so much about people’s yearnings and people’s desire to connect and the primal nature of sex, and the primal nature of nature, for that matter. Vampires are total sexual metaphors, there’s just no way around that. And the fact that it all takes place in this wet, humid, swampy, primeval madness, of course you’re going to go there. And because we’re on HBO and because we have a cast that doesn’t get uptight about it, it doesn’t have to be, like, “Ooh, sex.” You can let it be sex without it being so forbidden.

Q.

The sex also seems to reinforce the supernatural elements of the show, that it brings out the animal nature in everyone.

A.

My thinking has always been less about something that exists outside of nature than something that’s a deeper, more profound manifestation of nature, that perhaps humans, with our years of cerebral, self-reflection have gotten away from. Of course sex is magical. It’s a force that’s bigger than us. In fact, early on in the development process, I was called upon to give a one-sentence thematic pitch to the higher-ups at HBO as to what the show was about, and I thought, “Oh, dear God, what am I going to say?” I said, “Well, ultimately at its heart, it’s about the terrors of intimacy.” Which is an answer I just pulled totally out of [nowhere] at that moment. But I do think that actually, there is some truth to that. That is kind of what it’s about.

Q.

Did it take some convincing at first to get HBO to sign onto this?

A.

Well, I sensed a certain uncertainty when I delivered the pilot and it took them four months to decide to go to series. [laughs] I understand it, because given everything HBO had been up until that point, it was not an HBO show. Ultimately putting any show on the air is a gamble of sorts, as much as people would like to figure out the formula that they can totally depend on. But they went ahead and took the risk.

Q.

Do you feel redeemed that “True Blood” is now a core part of the HBO brand?

A.

I’m a Buddhist so one of my biggest beliefs is, everything changes, don’t take it personally. I think it’s part of the HBO brand right now. Maybe it wouldn’t have been 10 years ago. I’m sure it won’t be 10 years from now.

Q.

You told The Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago that you filmed a 3-D scene during production on the current season. Is there anything more you can say about it?

A.

We were asked by HBO to shoot one scene in 3-D as an experiment, and we did. And it looks fantastic. I don’t if anybody will ever see it. I personally think 3-D is kind of cool, but until I can just sit and watch something without having to wear goggles, 3-D is not going to make something that doesn’t work, work. HBO has been so good to me, I’m happy to say, “Absolutely, we’ll shoot the scene twice. We’ll shoot it in 3-D and we’ll shoot it regular. Here’s your 3-D version so you can look at it and you can decide what you want to do.” That’s pretty much all we did.

Q.

Might they show this in movie theaters to promote the new season? Or as a special broadcast for viewers with 3-D television sets?

A.

I don’t think they’ll broadcast it. But I do think they will look at it and decide if, down the road, they want us to do an episode in 3-D. Or at some point are they going to say, let’s shoot the show in 3-D? But I think all that is premature. It was an experiment for them. I’d love to shoot the show as a hologram, as a fully immersive, three-dimensional experience. Of course.